Waterloo Architecture students Janet Li, Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Yeoh have been recognized by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) with 2025 Foundation Scholarships and Bursaries!
Janet Li is the recipient of The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto Foundation's Award for Architectural Conservation for Facadism – a critique of the increasingly common practice of the preservation of the exterior walls of historic structures while constructing entirely new and much larger buildings behind them.
This award honours the memory of Richard Moorhouse, Founding President of the ALCTF and former Chair of the National Trust for Canada. The $1000 award is open to students or recent graduates working on applied research, or projects making a tangible contribution to architectural conservation in Canada.
Jury Comment:
Janet Li’s proposal makes a significant contribution to the field of architectural conservation by critically addressing the widespread practice of facadism in Toronto. It offers both a theoretical framework and empirical analysis that reveals how facadism prioritizes superficial preservation of façades at the expense of authentic heritage values, including social, cultural, and environmental dimensions.
Adam Cohen was awarded the Bing Thom Scholarship for the essay Fuller’s Pantheon: An evaluation of Buckminster fuller’s geodesic dome, built for Expo ’67 in Montreal, comparing it to The Pantheon in Rome.
This award honours the memory of internationally renowned architect Bing Thom (1940-2016) and his enduring belief in the transformative power of architecture.
Open to students from accredited schools of architecture in Canada and Hong Kong, the submission requirement is an essay responding to the questions: "Explain how a work of architecture can be transformative. Can you cite examples that demonstrate how the impact of a single building on a community can be transformative? Is every good building transformative on some level?" Two awards of $3500 will be offered every second year.
Jury Comment:
This essay is elegantly crafted, thoroughly researched, and a joy to read. Adam’s comparison of Fuller’s dome to the Pantheon is imaginative and insightful, and he closes the essay with a ‘call to action’ that is compelling.
Elizabeth Yeoh is Waterloo's recipient of the Southwest Ontario College of Fellows Student Scholarship. The Student Medals are prestigious awards given to one student at each accredited school of architecture; recognizing their academic excellence and/or outstanding final projects. Thanks to the generosity of the Southwest Ontario Fellows.